Voters Reject Anti-Government TABOR Proposals in Maine and Washington
An excellent point from Kristina Wilfore who observes that if you want a decent test of the “tea party” movement you could do worse than to look at TABOR proposals that would put arbitrary caps on state government spending and force meaningful reductions in the size of government. Two such proposals were on the ballot last night in Washington and Maine and they lost:
A central tenant of the right-wing agenda has been rejected with the defeat of TABOR (known deceptively as the “taxpayer bill of rights”) in these two states – states that are diverse from each other in almost all respects. Maine’s measure went down with a resounding defeat, 60% to 40%, while Washington’s campaign came from behind with a 55% to 45% rebuff.
A few weeks ago, conservative columnist and tea party champion John Fund wrote in the WSJ that: “If voters in Maine or Washington state pass a taxpayer bill of rights, it will be a clear sign that even in blue states the public is coming to believe that government spending is out of control and that elected officials can no longer be trusted to rein it in. That’s a message that will likely reverberate in Congress regardless of who wins in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races.”
Iris Lav from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes that “by rejecting TABOR, officially Question 4 in Maine and I-1033 in Washington, voters have helped these states preserve needed public services and improve the business climate.”
It’s also worth emphasizing that the reason radical budget-cutters have started turning to TABOR ballot initiatives to get their way is that even politicians who like to talk about cutting government in the abstract don’t actually want to take responsibility for specific cuts. That’s why Bob McDonnell made sure to stay nice and vague about what he’ll actually do once he takes over in Virginia.
25 Responses to “Voters Reject Anti-Government TABOR Proposals in Maine and Washington”
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November 4th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Cool, modern day Taborites.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taborite
…or possibly not.
November 4th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Wonderful news!! TABOR laws have destroyed state budgets in western states.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
This goes all the way back to Howard Jarvis and Prop 13 in California, which more or less gave us Reagan — Jarvis got his start in politics complaining about all these parks and playgrounds and whatnot that local and state politicians wanted to keep building for other people’s kids, which he as a taxpayer was expected to pay for. But he kept losing those fights.
Until he finally hit on the fact that millions of Californians owned homes which they had bought for cheap so long ago that their annual property taxes were more than their original mortgage payments. So he campaigned against taxes — which seemed to mean that spending would have to be cut.
Lots of folks try to give Jarvis (and Reagan) credit for political guts. But any idiot can see that offering voters more of their money back is like handing out free beer at a ballpark in August — there’s not a lot of courage required.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Do they use the name TABOR for these laws all over the country? My (perhaps mistaken) understanding was that they called this bill TABOR in Colorado because that acronym resonated with a locally famous name. Tabor was one of our Senators back in the day and you still find the Tabor name on a number of local landmarks. Do other states routinely refer to these as TABOR laws? Did this trend begin with CO or am I just being provincial?
November 4th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Apparently you don’t watch the news on TV. There were no TABOR referenda yesterday. No gay marriage/”everything but marriage” referenda. No elections for the House of Representatives. There were elections for governor in New Jersey and Virginia and nothing else.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Matt,
As a WA resident, the TABOR thing here was from an infamous TABORite whose name, Tim Eiyman, is more associated with such measures than TABOR or tea-bagger. There’s a good 40% of the electorate that votes against Tim-Eiyman-measures because they distrust him.
This measure was very purposefully timed to have the worst possible impact on governance in Washington state. Estimates were that property taxes would, by force of the initiative, been reduced to 0% before 2020.
All that being said, it was a pretty honest piece of TABOR stuff; others included a bill to force open HOV lanes to single-driver cars that would have cost the state tens of millions of dollars conditioned on HOV lanes being for carpoolers, buses and big rigs.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
gee Matty, and what’s the reason that Obama hasn’t specified those hundreds of billion$ in “waste, fraud, and abuse”?
Better yet, how’s come Dumbo hasn’t actually cut any of that waste, fraud, and abuse?
Is it sorta like his lies over the hundreds of billion$ he claimed to save on Iraq by projecting a 100 year occupation then saying “No we won’t do that” and then saying “See how much we save by not occupying for a hundred years?”.
And for the idiot who thinks:
“But any idiot can see that offering voters more of their money back is like handing out free beer at a ballpark in August — there’s not a lot of courage required.”
But hell it’s a great idea to give other people’s money to your favored few huh?
Imagine letting more Americans keep more of their own money in the first place, what an outrageous idea!
Wonder why Obama isn’t telling us all how much he wants to raise our taxes? Huh?
November 4th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
TABOR laws aren’t as bad as you might think. Here in Colorado, lawmakers have become quite creative in getting around it. And when voters have to approve a tax increase, they usually do. I was against it when it passed, and I still think it’s a bad idea. But it really hasn’t been as bad as I expected. Yeah, our schools suck, but they sucked before TABOR passed. We seem to like it that way. Except in Boulder, of course. We have higher taxes and better schools. My local high school is scary. Those kids are really good students. I ride the bus, so I get to talk to them a lot. They put me to shame, and I have an Ivy League education. And many of them will, too.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
What’s “arbitrary” about tying spending increases to inflation and population growth?
November 4th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
To follow up on anonymous at work, the initiative in WA was put forward by Tim Eyman. Eyman has put up a right-wing flavored initiative of some kind or another just about each of the last 10 years.
It’s gotten to the point now where even the conservative-ish Seattle Times is calling on him to get a real job and stop wasting everyone’s time.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
For one, it limits the ability for the state to increase or decrease spending depending on the economic situation and for another thing, it assumes that these are the only two criteria that impact the need for government spending.
There’s also productivity – so if the state is suddenly producing a much higher per capita GDP, then it prevents the state from spending some of that increase in productivity on further infrastructure improvements.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
This is the TABOR crowd’s third try at this in Maine. The first one was actually close. Each subsequent effort has done worse than the one before.
Maine teabaggers and hicks (there are a lot of each, or is it both) love to bitch about taxes but the real issue here is local control.
A light bulb finally went on that if you cut government spending by kneecapping local property tax decisions and placing all power in the statehouse (i.e., “the government”), someone is going to get screwed, and it may not be the people you hoped would be screwed.
November 4th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Maine and Washington aren’t that dissimilar, ISTM. They’re both coastal, whiter than average, blue on the presidential level, and represented in the Senate by two women. And according to Nate Silver they’re both kinda like Oregon.
November 4th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
at #8 fostert
I guess you are lucky you don’t live in Bacca county or any of the poor areas in Colorado where the schools are crumbling and they can’t attract science and math teachers at all. When TABOR came in colorado school funding dropped from somewhere in the top 20 to 49th in the nation (thank goddess for alabama). My stepson went to Fairview in Boulder and it is a great school, but I student taught at East High in Denver and it was a world apart from the environment in Boulder, and DPS is one of the better funded districts in colorado.
TABOR has basically gutted higher education funding in Colorado, which raises tuition and makes college much less affordable for lower middle class and the near poor to attend. Colorado’s funding for higher ed hampered universitys’ ability to fund infrastructure projects, update libraries and lab equipment, etc. TABOR was a disaster for colorado.
November 4th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
As a Washington resident, I’d love to see some fat taken out of the state government. I voted against this initiative because it’s the state legislature’s job to make cuts (and make the right kind of cuts) and the initiative process is out of control. I also hate Tim Eyman.
Still, I’d like to see Democrats take a proactive role in budget discipline at the city, state and national level. Liberals trust the government too much and fall too easily to the, ‘they’ll cut precious government services’ argument. Wasting taxpayer money does nobody any good. And if you want specifics, fire some of the Seattle DOT staff and at the permit and planning department; and sell those stupid Segways – just as an appetizer for future cuts.
November 4th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
As an alumni of the University of Washington, I was sent an email about I-1033, which I’m sure was also sent to all current students and their parents. You’re completely right that the idea of reducing state government is wonderful in the abstract, but when 25,000 students, 200,000 alumni, and many of their parents all receive an email showing that an initiative will cut student benefits and raise tuition, no way it’s going to pass.
November 4th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
“f you want a decent test of the “tea party” movement you could do worse than to look at TABOR proposals”
Yeah, but couldn’t you do a lot better, too? The Teabaggers and Becksters and Palinistas weren’t really organizing for these proposals in any great numbers.
Though THAT, honestly, tells us a lot about their motivations, at least. For as much as they talk about “small government” and “Don’t Tread On Me!” the thing that really energized them was just taking out some poor state senator that wasn’t ready for prime time, anyway.
November 4th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
You could substitute “California” for “Colorado” and “Prop 13″ for “TABOR” in your analysis. The only difference is that TABOR hasn’t yet had 30 years.
There is one silver lining to the slow public train wreck of the California dream; people are waking up to the long-term effects of these magic bullet tax caps.
November 4th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
In Maine, you can just about guarantee that if a tax cap screws someone out of something that the town or the state used to provide, the screwee probably looks and sounds a lot like you , which takes all the fun out of it.
Homogeneity does have some virtues.
November 4th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
the Americanist
At least, you understand it is the taxpayers money, NOT the government’s money to waste.
Lobstakilla
CA’s problem in not tax caps, it has a lot more to do with out-of-control public employee unions, pension plans, a dysfunctional State legislature, over regulation and progressive taxation that has driven out the most productive sector of the economy.
November 4th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Mike K
You forgot to mention large numbers of descendants of illegal aliens becoming a permanent underclass.
On TABOR, well, maybe it hurt Colorado. But not having limits on state taxation hasn’t exactly made Maine a very economically successful state.
I guess now that TABOR hasn’t passed, Maine schools will have the funding to prepare the kids for hte jobs of the future – you know, those jobs that they will get after they grow up and move out of Maine.
November 4th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
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November 5th, 2009 at 12:30 am
“I guess you are lucky you don’t live in Bacca county or any of the poor areas in Colorado where the schools are crumbling and they can’t attract science and math teachers at all.”
Yes, I am lucky for that. The weird thing is that Boulder is the last place that needs good education. Most of the people who live here came from somewhere else. I’ve lived here fifteen years and I only know four adults who grew up in Boulder, and two of them don’t live here anymore. Our economy relies on the education systems of everywhere but Boulder. It’s towns where people stay that really should want good education, and they don’t want it. I guess the real problem with TABOR is that it appeals to peoples’ worst instincts. Want your kid to go to a good school, or do you want a few cases beer? In Boulder, we’d take the former. The rest of Colorado will take the latter. But let’s face it, without TABOR, they still wouldn’t fund schools. If they had more revenue, they’d build prisons and arrest more people.
November 5th, 2009 at 9:23 am
“What’s “arbitrary” about tying spending increases to inflation and population growth?”
BFR hits the main points, but one more observation: the whole principle of capitalist economics (which various right-wingers, libertarian or not, love to celebrate), is economic GROWTH. That is, capitalist forms of investment and production increase the overall economy, absolutely and per capita, over time.
If you tie government spending only to inflation and population growth, the government will become an ever-smaller part of the economy, and be increasingly unable to provide services that are up to date (economic growth produces new technologies and methods at up-to-date prices). Naturally, that’s what the TABORites want: the ‘drown it in the bathtub’ school.
But voters have figured out that TABOR initiatives are not “government stability” initiatives, they are government shrinkage initiatives — even before the various devious ratchet mechanisms built in that would force decreases in economic downturns (pro-cyclical and thus damaging) while then resetting the ‘base’ so that government would be starved of funds during growth periods.
And after 25 years of “government is the problem” brought us to the Great Recession with excess government debt, lousy roads, ineffective schools, and shattered safety nets, the whole approach is not looking so good to most voters — not to mention anyone who’s lived or traveled in Europe lately. Compared to Western Europe, the US is looking more and more like an underdeveloped country!
November 7th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
And it was in an off-year election as well, which shifts the turnout demographic slightly to the right … meaning this is probably the best TABOR can do in “blue states”!